Haleh Esfandiari: Fate of jailed scholar may be settled shortly

[Editor's Note: Haleh Esfandiari is the wife of George Mason University historian Shaul Bakhash.]

TEHRAN, Aug. 12 — A senior judiciary official said Sunday that Iran had finished its investigation into two Iranian-American academics who were arrested in May on espionage charges, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

But the official, Hassan Haddad, who is Tehran’s deputy prosecutor, did not disclose the conclusions of the investigation into the detainees, Haleh Esfandiari, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, and Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planner with ties to the Open Society Institute, a pro-democracy policy planning organization financed by George Soros.

“They have to do some written work and then a decision will be made about them,” the news agency quoted him as saying. He did not elaborate.

Ms. Esfandiari and Mr. Tajbakhsh have been in Evin Prison since their arrest three months ago. The state-run television showed a video of the two last month that suggested they had been involved in activities to overthrow the government.